What better way to preserve, smarten up and share her family and friends’ treasured old recipes than a book?
BY ALISON CARTER
Hardback,” Anthea said urgently. “Will it be hardback?” Her friend Michelle made calming motions with both hands, as though gently deflating a blow-up bed.
“Anthea, it will be beautiful, it will be gorgeous. And yes, it will be hardback.”
It was Anthea Miller’s first book, possibly her only one, if the process took this long. So, it had to be perfect.
It was to be a general cookery book, made up of all the most used, very best, favourite recipes in Anthea’s folders, files and cookbooks, and the folders, files and cookbooks of her friends. Anthea was a “good, plain cook” and she’d suggested that to Michelle, her publisher friend, when Michelle had taken on the project.
“The Good Plain Cook is a good title,” Anthea said. “Or maybe A Good Plain Cook. Is it helpful to be nearer the start of the alphabet?”
Michelle told her “the” and “a” were ignored in alphabetising books on a shelf.
“But that’s immaterial,” said Michelle, “because we are not going to call it either of those things.”
Michelle said they should call it Well-Worn: A Book Of Real Recipes, and in the end Anthea agreed. That’s what it was, after all.
The idea had come to Anthea as she was making beanburgers. As her ancient recipe file lay open on the worktop, someone had dropped on to the newspaper clipping one of those sticky strips that come with a bag of pasta. It had become attached to the recipe.
“I can’t see how long it takes to grill them any more,” she told her husband Dave. “I’ll just have to guess.”
He leaned over the file and sniffed.
“Oh yeah, that’s a pain. Have you got another similar recipe?”
Anthea looked up at him as though he’d taken leave of his senses.
“Dave, this is the beanburger recipe. This is the only one that’s good enough.”
It struck her, at that moment, how old the recipe was. The paper was yellowish. She thumbed through the file, noting all those that had suffered vandalism – a scribble saying needs more water, a mug ring mark, a smear of soy sauce.
Then there were all the recipes in the handwriting of her mum, or her brother, or her aunt Philly, tatty things with the sentences sloping or whatever was on the back of the paper showing through.
There was even one that Anthea’s grandmother had written down for her, one of several recipes
